


Home

by chaosandpandemonium



Series: Home Is Where The Heart Is [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: BAMF Lida, Baby!Lida, Baby!Winchesters, Gen, Home Is Where The Heart Is AU, I'm so mean to my characters, Lida Winchester (OFC/OWC), Lida has a shit home life, Lidaverse, Not Beta Read, Not really babies, Poor Lida, Pre-Series, Teen!Lida, Teen!Winchesters, sad past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 03:30:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4945087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosandpandemonium/pseuds/chaosandpandemonium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lida Winchester - born Lida Davis - has had six homes throughout her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Quilt

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya!  
> Here's the next one - was going to post it as a oneshot but I don't know if I'm going to finish it any time soon so I figured I;d chop it up so you could have some of it! :)  
> I now have a SPN tumblr - perfect-thyming-batman - where I reblog a whole lot of spn stuff and post my own works, so if you're interested, or want to chat, pop over there.  
> 

Lida Winchester – born Lida Davis – has had six homes throughout her life. 

The first was a tiny cottage which belonged to her grandparents. It was out in the country, a tiny slice of property which was mostly filled with trees and garden. It had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, a lounge. There was a small space where they had a dining table. 

Lida's room was painted a happy pastel yellow. It had a circular window, and instead of a curtain rail, there was a polished branch that Lida's grandpa had taken a liking to. Her bed was small, but it still took up most of the room. She had a quilt which her grandmama had made for her mother, covered in orange and pink and yellow and black triangles. 

Lida couldn't sleep without it near her – it smelled flowery and sweet, and sort of spicy; a pleasant cinnamon which she lived. It was, she suspected, what her mother smelled like. She didn't see her mother too much; she was always off saving the world and killing the monsters. Lida knew that she should be scared by knowing the truth, but she wasn't, because she knew that Summer – her mum – was out there, killing them all, so that they couldn’t hurt her. 

Lida's memories of that home are saturated in the giddy happiness of early childhood, faded but drowsily pleasant. All except the one – the one where flames, greedy and bright, lick up the walls, and there's dark tendrils creeping down her throat, suffocating her. 

The one which features the monster Summer couldn't kill. 

After that, Summer fought with Uncle Ben a lot. They were brother and sister, which Lida thought meant they loved each other a lot. But then Summer slapped Uncle Ben, and Lida hadn't seen him since. 

Lida lived with her mother for a long time. She was four when her first home burnt to the ground, and they traveled together for the next five years, never stopping in any one place for too long, always hurrying, rushing, racing. Onwards and upwards, Summer would sing. 

Onwards and upwards.


	2. Sand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part dos. Remember, I love comments and kudos make my day! :)

About a year after the non-stop journey started, it paused for a couple of weeks while Lida and Summer lived in a tiny bach that looked out onto a beach. Lida expected the water to be nice and warm and bubbly, because that's how it looked from the window – but it was cold, freezing, and it hurt her eyes. She liked the sand, though, and she'd spend hours making castles and sculptures and huge piles and imagine what having a daddy was like. 

She'd imagine what having a real mummy was like, sometimes, but then she'd see Summer and would feel guilty. 

But that bach was the second place Lida called home – because two weeks stretched to two months, with Summer sneaking off every couple of days to go on a hunt, leaving little five-year-old Lida to fend for herself. 

She did alright – she'd sneak money from the jar Summer left on the bench in the kitchen, and she'd go and buy tinned food and instant noodles. Sometimes she'd buy chips, and if she was feeling really happy, she'd get herself a can of fizz. But that cost more than Lida wanted to spend, so that didn't happen often. 

And then they ran out of money. It didn't happen all at once; just slowly, the jar got emptier and emptier. Lida knew what was going to happen. She knew they'd have to leave; she'd known it since they got there. 

It didn't stop her from crying herself to sleep in the backseat as they drove away.


	3. Kitchen

They didn't stay in any one place for longer than a week until Lida was seven, almost three years after the bach. Summer rented a luxurious apartment for Lida, where she would be staying for a month. Lida wasn't sure what her mum was going off to do, but it was important and dangerous and she was sure it had something to do with her grandparents. 

Lida wasn't going to complain; she loved looking after herself and being a grown up. She was attempting some more complicated dishes, now that her cooking had improved (being able to see the top of the stove without a stool helped as well). 

She'd started shooting up, growth spurt after growth spurt. She'd get growing pains at night and wake up screaming from the ache in her legs. Sometimes it would stop after a while, if she buried her face in her pillow and tried to ignore it. Other times it wouldn't, and she have to crawl to the kitchen, blindly paw through the cupboards until she found the pain meds, swallow them dry even though it hurt her throat and made her gag. 

She'd wake in the morning with a crick in her neck and a pounding head. 

Most of the time she managed to get herself off to school – but on those mornings, she couldn't bring herself to do it. It wasn't like she had much incentive, anyway. She hated school; she was treated like an idiot because of how much she moved around, the other kids would tease her relentlessly, and she couldn't be bothered with how ignorant they all were. 

She knew she wasn't an idiot; she was actually very smart, would have been put forward a grade if she went to school consistently. 

Didn't mean it didn't hurt. 

What hurt more, though, was having to clean up on her last morning there. Standing in the doorway and looking at it, it seemed like she'd never really been there, like she didn't exist, almost. Like she never had. 

Lida knew better than to cry this time. But the next time she woke up screaming, her bones aching and grinding, the tears in her eyes weren't entirely because of the pain.


	4. Bath

Just under a year later, Summer and Lida find a rickety abandoned farmhouse, just outside the town where they're investigating their case. 

They set up camp, roll out bedrolls. Lida gets enrolled in another new school, using her lunchtimes to scour the school library for anything helpful. 

The case turned out to be a classic salt-and-burn (only with two spirits instead of one, the surprise of which cost Summer a dislocated finger and Lida severely bruised ribs). 

Her second day there, Lida discovered the place had one of those fancy, old-fashioned, claw-footed baths. Thanking god that they had hot, running water (how, she didn't know, but she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth), she'd luxuriated in the tub until the water started to get cold. 

She'd invited Summer to have a bath, too, thinking that it might do her some good, but she was too focused on research. 

That in itself was odd, and Lida should have picked up the warning signs right about then, but she didn't. Sure, Summer had been getting more obsessive, but she was always obsessive. Lida was just glad that she was finally taking hunting seriously; there was no more need for the heart-wrenching, sickening fear that her mother would throw herself at anything with claws, just for the adrenaline rush. 

Lida had poured herself a bath, settled in with a hand to her aching ribs. She'd had another growth spurt – her knees were up around her ears, for god's sakes – but the hot water was soothing, and it lulled her into a drowsy, comfortable state. 

Summer had knocked on the door, jolting Lida awake – demanded that she pack immediately, that they were leaving now, that it wasn't worth spending another day in this godforsaken place. She'd found something that might be a case, and she wanted Lida out the door in fifteen minutes. Lida had obeyed, as she always did, knowing that to argue was extremely inadvisable. 

It wasn't until the next morning, staring glumly at the filthy tiles of the motel shower, that she realised she'd never let the water out of the bath.


	5. Garden

The last time Lida and Summer shared a home was in February '93. 

It was the longest time Lida had ever called a single place home since she'd started hunting with Summer. They didn’t stay there all the time, of course; they came and went, different hunts calling them to California, Oregon, Minnesota, New Jersey. They'd pick up others on the way, and sometimes it felt like a never-ending, vicious cycle. 

Death, investigate, solve, kill. Rinse, dry, and repeat. 

But for over six months, that was where they were based. 

Lida's favourite memories of that time were sitting in the little garden out the back, sipping iced tea and flicking through ancient spellbooks written in dead languages. 

Sometimes she'd lie down on the grass – warm and damp beneath her skin – feel the dew soak through her clothes, the sun beat down on her skin, the wind playing cool across her forehead, shadows moving with the leaves above. 

She'd focus on each of her senses, ground herself to then and there and her. 

She can still, sometimes, smell the flowers – pink and pretty and so very delicate – and then an image comes up, fresh and filled with bright sunlight, and she remembers just as if it all happened yesterday. 

The garden was her release. Summer was almost unbearable, living and breathing hunting, closing in on the goddamn thing that had killed her parents, had almost killed her daughter, almost killed her. 

It scared Lida. Scared the crap out of her, if she was being honest – but there wasn't much she could do about it. It had been difficult to get through to Summer before – it was impossible then. 

Leaving that place was simultaneously heart breaking and ridiculously easy. She supposed she'd just gotten used to leaving and never looking back, knowing that no matter how comfortable she got somewhere, it would eventually disappear in Summer's rearview mirror. 

But in the nearly five years she'd been travelling with Summer, it was the longest she'd stayed anywhere, the longest she'd called a place home since she was four and living with her grandparents, in the room with the pink quilt and the yellow walls and the round window. 

She let herself cry in the shower that night, remembering and aching for all the homes she'd known and left. The warm spray washed her sticky tears away, leaving her feeling empty and alone.


	6. Family

It didn't occur to Lida until Christmas of that same year – the dreaded, the beloved '93 – that she had finally found a home which she'd never have to leave. 

She'd been living with them for three months – ever since, upon seeing Summer so cold and broken, she'd picked up the phone and called the man whom Summer had never wanted her to meet. It was revenge, a way of getting back at her mother for leaving her high and dry. 

He'd shown up, like he'd promised, two boys in tow – Sam and Dean, she knew now, one a year older, four years between him and his older brother. They scared her, then, but they didn't scare her now. 

They were her brothers, and John – dad....he was her father. 

Sure, John had been absent for that Christmas, fighting a monster somewhere, but Lida didn't mind. She was safe in the knowledge that he did it to protect them – and he left them in a much better state than Summer had ever left Lida. 

And she had Sam and Dean. 

She couldn't pinpoint when, exactly, she'd started to love them. It had happened almost without her noticing, and now here she was. Watching them as they bickered over the remote, chewing on vending machine junk, sipping pop, laughing carelessly. 

They'd been in the motel for a total of three days. It was grungy and grimy and yuck, but she'd never felt more at home. Just seconds before, she'd realised it was because Sam and Dean were home – and Sam and Dean were there. 

If this was it, if she spent the rest of her life never staying in any one place for longer than a week, well – as long as her brothers were there, she'd be okay with that. 

With them being the last home she'd ever know.


End file.
